Wireless BAN on a Bipedal Robot

This paper describes a wireless approach to “wiring” a bipedal robot. The use of a body area network (BAN) based on RF technology saves substantial weight and prevents failures due to broken cables near moving parts. Despite using wireless technology, the resulting system features low latency, high throughput and a fast refresh rate. Energy consumption has been kept at a low level by using off-the-shelf single chip transceivers. Two different network topologies have been experimented with and compared against each other. Using BAN technology, a custom-designed FPGA multi-core processor constantly receives and processes 3D acceleration measurements from sensors mounted on the seven limbs of the robot. The same BAN is also used by the FPGA to send commands back to the limbs.